That’s all from me. I leave you with Nuno Espirito Santo’s post-match reaction. Bye!
It was a tough night for us I think. Since we conceded a goal, after the game became very difficult. The red card, and all these things. The boys are working, and it becomes very hard. Playing with 11 is tough, with one man less it’s harder.
Was City’s first goal disappointing?
Of course. It’s a 30-yard pass that breaks us. We have to see. I think, honestly, the result there’s no doubt about it – Man City had chances, controlled the game – but we had a plan, a plan about our defensive organisation, trying to stay in the game. With the goal, with the red card, everything went down. We have to look ahead now, forget about it and look ahead.
On Boly’s red card:
It’s a red card, no doubt about it. It’s a red card.
Nuno Espirito Santo says: fair enough, guv.
Just interviewed Nuno Espírito Santo in the tunnel.
— Conor McNamara (@ConorMcNamaraIE) January 14, 2019
He says he has no complaints with the red card for Boly. #bbcfootball
Here’s Kyle Walker’s reaction to the win:
I think when they go down to 10 men – I haven’t seen the decision – we’re always going to find it easier. Fair play to them, they gave it a good go and we were probably fortunate to get the three goals.
And to his return to the first team:
It was obviously disappointing when you’re left out of the Premier League line-up but it was a reality check. I had to sit on the bench, and you probably learn more than when you’re on the field. I’ve taken it under consideration, I’ve took it on the chin and I’ll just have to work hard to stay in the starting XI.
And to where City are right now:
I don’t think anything’s changed from the start of the season. We’re getting the rub of the green now and our luck’s starting to change. We’re still in all four competitions, we’re fighting to be in the finals of each one and we need to keep that going.
Here’s a much more comprehensive match report, courtesy of Daniel Taylor:
If there is one thing that Liverpool should know, squatting defiantly at the top of the Premier League, it is that Manchester City have no intentions of seeing another team remove the championship trophy from their possession. Pep Guardiola’s team made that clear when Liverpool were the visitors and, in their latest victory, it quickly became clear the reigning champions seem quite happy playing this game of catch-up. For now, at least.
More here:
That was, in the end, pretty humdrum. City hogged possession but created little against an admirably organised and disciplined (one tackle excepted) Wolves side.
Final score: Manchester City 3-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers
90+4 mins: And that’s it! City win with great ease, and trim Liverpool’s lead at the top to four points!
90+3 mins: City are camped on the edge of the Wolves penalty area again.
90+2 mins: One last (probably) attempt on goal for City: Sterling gives the ball to Gundogan, who finds himself facing away from goal so tries backheeling it, sending it rolling gently to Rui Patricio.
90+1 mins: There will be about three minutes of stoppage time, which given that there have been no injuries, penalties or red cards this half seems a bit toppish.
90 mins: Traoré sets off on a lone gallop into the City half and somehow comes out of it with a corner. The away fans roar in delight.
89 mins: City pass around the edge of the Wolves area for a while, without ever quite finding a way into it.
86 mins: Ederson roars out of his area to intercept a Wolves through-ball, controls it, is carried forward by his momentum and ends up hanging around and playing a few passes from a position in midfield.
82 mins: City are 20-1 up on shots, and 8-0 ahead when it comes to shots on target.
82 mins: Danilo becomes the latest City player to send a shot from outside the box wildly high and/or wide. This is perhaps the wildest of the lot, though.
80 mins: A cross from the left is headed away to the edge of the area, where Fernandinho sends it arrowing towards the back of the stand.
GOAL! Manchester City 3-0 Wolves (Coady own goal, 78 mins)
The corner is played back to De Bruyne, who hangs in a lovely cross from the left, which hits the back of Coady’s leg and goes in at the far post!
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77 mins: De Bruyne blasts a shot towards the near post from the edge of the area, and Rui Patricio does well to push it away for a corner.
76 mins: The evening’s final substitution sees Gabriel Jesus leave the field, and Sergio Agüero come on for those few minutes’ action Pep Guardiola promised pre-match.
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74 mins: Back to the Kompany/Boly debate, then. “I think the difference is home advantage,” writes Kári Tulinius. “As mentioned on a recent Football Weekly, there’s ample evidence that home advantage comes down to referees being influenced by the reactions of the crowd. Kompany’s tackle was at home, Boly’s away.”
74 mins: City make their second change, bringing Ilkay Gundogan on and Sané off.
72 mins: Wolves use up their final substitution by bringing Moutinho off, and Morgan Gibbs-White on.
70 mins: Fernandinho’s shot is deflected over the bar.
67 mins: Wolves are defending well, and City attacking smartly. This game has plenty to commend it, but at present is entirely lacking in drama.
66 mins: De Bruyne runs onto a loose ball on the edge of the Wolves area, and blasts a shot wildly wide and high. Which is just as well, because that would have destroyed any goal it flew into.
64 mins: De Bruyne sends Sterling clear with a very fine pass, but the cross is cleared.
61 mins: David Silva, as of tonight City’s all-time highest Premier League appearance maker, comes off, and Kevin de Bruyne replaces him.
60 mins: Fernandinho lifts the ball over the Wolves defence, but Sané can’t quite bring it under control.
58 mins: Wolves make a second change, bringing Jota off and replacing him with Romain Saïss.
58 mins: Wolves are having a good spell of possession, though it’s almost entirely inside their own half.
55 mins: Walker fires in a shot from range, which gets a slight deflection that helps it into Rui Patricio’s arms.
54 mins: Jesus passes to Sané, who is clean through but just offside, and anyway shoots into Rui Patricio.
53 mins: Wolves break through Traoré, but there’s nobody there to meet his pull-back. City then break through Sterling, but he passes into a defender’s leg. Wolves then try to break again, but a long pass to Jota runs out of play.
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51 mins: City work the ball down the right with a lovely exchange of passes, and Bernardo Silva picks out Sané with the pull-back, but his shot is hilariously awful, and the ball bobbles out for a goal kick.
46 mins: The second half is under way! Wolves have brought Adama Traoré on, and taken Raul Jiménez off.
“The difference, for clarification, is that one of the fouls was performed by Pep’s anointed princelings while the other (totally different situation) was performed against them,” writes Matthew Turner. “No brainer, really.” That is an extremely cynical reading of the situation, if understandable in the circumstances. I think two referees can see two very similar situations very slightly differently without (necessarily) being guilty of favouritism.
Half time: Manchester City 2-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers
45+4 mins: We have had half of the time. City have one hand on three points.
45+1 mins: There will be three minutes’ stoppage time, which given that there’s been a red card, a penalty and an injury seems on the light side.
44 mins: Sterling somehow wins a header, in the middle of the six-yard box, but he diverts the ball straight to Rui Patricio.
43 mins: “Please explain, what was the difference (apart from the red card) between Bony’s tackle today and last week’s tackle from Vincent Kompany,” wonders Tim MacGabhann (and a few others). “If one’s red both are reds.” They were very similar offences, and there doesn’t seem any logical explanation for only one of them being punished with a red card. Boly could have been booked, I thought, though having said that you couldn’t really argue with the referee’s harsher interpretation.
GOAL! Manchester City 2-0 Wolves (Jesus, 39 mins)
Jesus sends Rui Patricio the wrong way, and City double their lead!
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City have a penalty!
39 mins: Bernardo turns the ball towards Sterling in the area. He speeds past Bennett, who sticks out a leg with the ball nowhere near and catches the player!
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37 mins: And nearly a second at the other end! Sterling pulls back to Jesus, in a pocket of penalty-area space, but his decision to control the ball before shooting gave a defender time to get in the way of the shot when it came.
36 mins: Chance for Wolves! Suddenly they have three people running towards two defenders, but Jonny tries to pass when he might have shot, and Jota didn’t anticipate it.
35 mins: Sané’s very fine, mazy dribble into the box ends with his shot being blocked and bouncing away for a corner.
32 mins: Wolves are defending space pretty well at the moment. Offering very little in attack, as you’d expect, but City haven’t had any clear chances since their goal. “You said the name and number should be enough of a clue for players,” writes Peter McMurry of those Wolves dressing-room pics, “but perhaps it isn’t. In the 90s NHL player Stu Grimson used to hang a picture of himself over his locker so that, in his words, ‘when I forget how to spell my name, I can still find my clothes’.”
28 mins: Danilo runs into the area, whereupon he throws himself to the turf in a very obvious attempt to win a penalty. If that’s not a booking for simulation I’m not sure what the rule’s there for.
27 mins: Not as painful as it appeared, it seems. After a minute or so of treatment, Jesus leaps to his feet, jogs happily back to the half-way line and is beckoned back onto the field.
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25 mins: Ouch! Again! Bernardo Silva plays Walker down the right, he slams in a hard cross and Jesus flies in at the near post, misses the chance and absolutely flies into the side of the goal, possibly via the post. He goes down, and stays there.
22 mins: Danilo shanks a 20-yarder over the bar. The traffic was pretty much entirely one-way even before Boly’s blunder, so it hasn’t really had much of an impact.
Silly Willy Boly gets sent off!
19 mins: Ouch! Boly flies in to win the ball, does so, and then keeps going right into Bernardo Silva’s ankle. I’m not sure there was any intent to harm, but it certainly looked pretty vicious, and the referee thinks it deserves a red card!
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18 mins: City are absolutely dominant now. It looks very much like Wolves will look back on those two goal kicks and three throw-ins as their golden age.
16 mins: Save! David Silva’s 25-yarder flicks off a defender and would have gone in had Rui Patricio not tipped it over. The corner is headed clear (for now).
15 mins: The free-kick is cleared to Sané, who passes to Jesus and, already sprinting, speeds up. A few moments later and he’s pointing towards the precise spot inside Wolves’ penalty area where he would like the ball, and Jesus attempts to deliver it. The ball isn’t perfect and it’s intercepted, the move memorable mainly for Sané’s phenomenal length-of-the-pitch sprint.
14 mins: Walker gives the ball away and Jota leads a Wolves break – at least until Fernandinho hacks him down, with the ball long gone. That is every inch a booking, and he is indeed booked.
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13 mins: This is a great stat:
David Silva has appeared in 7.4% of Man City's top-flight games (1899-2019)
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) January 14, 2019
11 mins: Wolves attack, and find Doherty running into the penalty area, in loads of space and with plenty of team-mates to aim for in the middle. A pull-back was the best option, but instead he wallops the ball over everybody’s heads and out for a throw-in.
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GOAL! Manchester City 1-0 Wolves (Jesus, 10 mins)
And with their first attack of note, City take the lead! Laporte’s excellent pass sends Sané running down the left, and his low centre picks out Jesus in the middle, who turns it in from six yards!
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8 mins: Sterling sends in a tasty cross from the right, but in the middle three Wolves defenders are able to decide amongst themselves which of them will head it clear.
7 mins: The first shot of the game comes from the right boot of Leroy Sané, and is thumped straight into Moutinho, who was closing him down.
5 mins: Describing Boly sending a limp header from a long throw looping six yards wide of goal an “opportunity for Wolves” is inexplicably positive.
4' | #MCI 0-0 #WOL
— Wolves (@Wolves) January 14, 2019
Early opportunity for Wolves as Bennett picks out Boly with a long throw, the defender gets up to meet it but sees his headed effort miss wide of the target.#MCIWOL
4 mins: Now City have a goal kick. The game can only improve from here.
4 mins: And now two more throw-ins. They are not hurrying to take them, either.
3 mins: So far Manchester City have hardly had a kick, and when they have touched the ball they’ve put it straight out of play. Wolves have thus had two goal kicks and a throw-in.
1 min: And they’re away! Jota gets the ball rolling for Wolves.
Do your own body language interpretation:
It's time! 🙌#MCIWOL #mancity pic.twitter.com/jcUbtxrOvM
— Manchester City (@ManCity) January 14, 2019
And they’re out! Handshakes have just been completed, and kick-off is but moments away.
The players are in the tunnel!
“That Man City bench though. Is quite intimidating,” writes Ian Copestake. “One realises what an amazing feat it is to even have a semblance of a title race.” Agüero and De Bruyne, that’s basically cheating.
Pep Guardiola talks, first about his player’s mindset:
The mindset was good for 16, 17 months. We don’t have complaints about that. The players don’t have to feel bad because they were outstanding for many, many months. All we can do is try to do our job. We cannot be involved in Liverpool’s games, only when we play each other. Focus on what we have to do, try to do our game. The opponents are good, they have a lot of points, and if you want to have a chance to compete with them until the end we have to win points.
And on Wolves:
They are doing incredible so far. Newly promoted and a lot of points and they are already in the comfortable zone and playing good football. They are a strong team on set-pieces, they’re so fast in front, they have a lot of quality in the middle. We know that.
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“Hugely irritated by the brainless use of both landscape and portrait for the Wolves players photos,” says David Young. “Real blight on the game.”
It’s not a one-off, either:
Nuno Espirito Santo has a chat, about whether his players are looking forward to tonight’s match:
They are always looking forward to big challenges, and today no doubt about it it’s a big, big challenge. [Our record against the top teams] helps the work, it helps the belief, the confidence, the process of building a team ready to compete. All the matches in the Premier League are very hard and our approach is always the same. We will play against a fantastic team.
What, he’s asked, does his team need to do right tonight:
The basics in football: to be organised, disciplined and play the game.
Dressing-room watch: I do like the photographs stuck above each player’s kit cubbyhole here, just in case the name and number isn’t enough of a clue for them.
The teams
The teams are in! And here they are:
Manchester City: Ederson, Walker, Stones, Laporte, Danilo, Bernardo Silva, Fernandinho, Silva, Sterling, Gabriel Jesus, Sane. Subs: Gundogan, Aguero, De Bruyne, Delph, Mahrez, Otamendi, Muric.
Wolverhampton Wanderers: Rui Patricio, Bennett, Coady, Boly, Doherty, Dendoncker, Neves, Jonny, Joao Moutinho, Jimenez, Jota. Subs: Ivan Cavaleiro, Helder Costa, Gibbs-White, John Ruddy, Saiss, Ruben Vinagre, Traore.
Referee: Craig Pawson.
Your #mancity team to face Wolves tonight! 🙌
— Manchester City (@ManCity) January 14, 2019
City XI | Ederson, Walker, Stones, Laporte, Danilo, Fernandinho, Silva (C), Sane, Sterling, Bernardo, Jesus
Subs | Muric, Gündogan, Agüero, De Bruyne, Delph, Mahrez, Otamendi
Presented by @HAYSWorldwide ⚽️ #MCIWOL pic.twitter.com/7pNKaQLPNj
Here's how Wolves line-up for tonight's @premierleague fixture against @ManCity. #MCIWOL
— Wolves (@Wolves) January 14, 2019
🐺📋 pic.twitter.com/b79gnsDI9p
Hello world!
So the first thing to point out, which you might not have noticed during another weekend packed with, you know, hours and minutes and the kind of distractions that those things often bring, is that Liverpool won again. Their lead over Manchester City at the top of the table is currently seven points, with Tottenham nine points off the pace, Chelsea 10 points away and Arsenal and Manchester United 16 point behind and more likely to be renamed after Hogwarts houses and forced to play in deely boppers than they are to be crowned champions of England this year.
But City have a game - this game - in hand. Win it and they shave Liverpool’s lead to four points. Lose it and they don’t.
Wolves are 11th in the league and thus the calibre of opposition that Pep Guardiola’s side can be expected to routinely swat aside, but it might not be so straightforward. Of all teams outside the top six their record against the top six is best: they have won two, lost two and drawn three for a handsome nine points, one of them won against City earlier this season (there are still six teams, or 23.3% of all non-top-six sides, who have got 0 points against the top six, and only six teams who have won more than three points against them). This is more than Chelsea (eight), Tottenham (six), Arsenal (five), Manchester United (five), though obviously Wolves play more games against the top six because they are not in one of them. Wolves have won five of their last eight games in league and cup, beating Chelsea, Tottenham and Liverpool on the way.
So, in brief, this might be good. Welcome.
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